A technical problem presently exists in the attempt to prepare a connector between systems such as Vitria Business Ware to an ENTERPRISE JAVA BEAN (EJB) software object Application Program Interface (API) for an interfacing application, in that the underlying functionality of the application must be known and explicit code must be written to control an interaction/session with the JAVA BEAN software object. This is excessively detail oriented and time consuming and therefore subject to error.
In the past, attempts have been made to solve similar problems to permit creation of live applications or applets by using graphical representations of program modules. One such attempt is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,044,218 issued Mar. 28, 2000 titled “System, method and article of manufacture for creating a live application or applet development environment.” This patent teaches software that cooperatively promotes and permits immediate socialization of new components with existing components as the new components are instantiated or dropped onto the development desktop. This is achieved by registering a new component being instantiated with the development environment's kernel. Registration, in turn, invokes an initialization method derived from the class template that yielded the new component. The initialization method appropriately personalizes the new component when it executes its associated logic. The initialization method provides an editor for the new component if its properties are to be made editable. The software environment, its kernel, templates, components, editor and methods are preferably programmed in the JAVA programming language or a JAVA compatible language.
Another earlier system is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,913,065, issued Jun. 15, 1999, titled “System, method and article of manufacture for creating hierarchical folder components for use in a JAVA programming language application or applet.” This patent teaches a system and method for creating hierarchical folder components for use with other object oriented based components, including other folder components, and component assemblies. Each hierarchical folder is provided with an editor that pops up upon its instantiation and permits a user to edit the folder component name as well as the number and type of ports assigned to the folder component.
Both of these patents teach systems to use representations of program modules or objects to graphically create an application by automatically connecting these modules or objects to form an executable object oriented program. Neither of these systems or methods describe a way of allowing the message definition of a middleware module to dictate the business logic of interacting with an EJB software object to fulfill the programmed requirements/events without knowledge of the underlying application functionality.
These is a need in the art for a system and method for a more cost efficient and less error prone system of creating a connector in an object-oriented system by using representations of middleware data structures to represent how to interact with an ENTERPRISE JAVA BEAN software object to permit dynamic bridging of a middleware application to an EJB software object API without knowledge of the underlying application functionality.